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Comment by Vishal_TE | Hacker News Reader

People also need to think for themselves and take responsibility for their actions. Remember the case where someone got millions for spilling hot coffee on himself? Hot coffee is hot and it's the drinkers responsibility to not spill it. We can't blindly follow what we read or see. If we do that, there won't be any issue.

The other problem is that platforms try to be the arbiters of truth. That can't work because most things are in shades of gray. When platforms take sides, the other side feels slighted.

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> "Remember the case where someone got millions for spilling hot coffee on himself?"

Often trotted out as an example of frivolous litigation, you're likely referring to

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liebeck_v._McDonald%27s_Restau...

> "Stella Liebeck, a 79-year-old woman who suffered third-degree burns in her pelvic region"

> "Liebeck sought to settle with McDonald's for $20,000 to cover her actual and anticipated expenses. Her past medical expenses were $10,500; her anticipated future medical expenses were approximately $2,500; and her daughter's loss of income was approximately $5,000 for a total of approximately $18,000"

McDonald's offered $800. Liebeck retained an attorney. After continuing to refuse to settle, the jury ultimately awarded $160,000 to cover expenses, and $2.7M in punitive damages.

If you want to argue the personal responsibility angle for the $20,000, you're entitled to your opinion. The millions were not what she personally was asking for.

Yes, the common perception of this lawsuit is a prime example of an excellent PR spin. Almost everyone seems to know of this lawsuit, but almost all of them seem to have very important details wrong. There are good reasons McDonald's lost this lawsuit.

Skin grafts on your genitals are not just hot coffee. They were serving coffee 40 deg F (22 deg C) hotter than the temperature needed to fry an egg, and at least 20 deg F (11 deg C) hotter than any other tested vendor. Also, at the time, McDonald's had reports of over 700 people who had been injured to various degrees by their coffee.

thanks for posting this. this story keeps popping up, always with this kind of details either omitted or completely wrong.

it's important to keep reminding people of those important details.

thank you!

>>They were serving coffee 40 deg F (22 deg C) hotter than the temperature needed to fry an egg

That right there is also PR spin, because it does not actually take that high of heat to "fry an egg", infact to cook eggs properly you often want lower heat or they become rubbery... Thus it is PR spin to phrase it in that manner because people associate "frying" with extreme high temps well over boiling point (212 degrees F / 100 deg C)

The coffee at McD's at the time was around 180 degrees F (82 deg C), their justification for that (right or wrong) was customers wanted to hotter coffee so it would still be hot when they arrived at the homes or offices after visiting the drive through.

Anecdotally, I know many people today that complaining about drinks from Drive through not being HOT enough, or cooling down too quickly

>>Also, at the time, McDonald's had reports of over 700 people who had been injured to various degrees by their coffee.

Over a 10 year span, over thousands of locations, and probably millions of cups of coffee sold, from a statistical standpoint that is very small rate

And the punitive damages were awarded because there were documents that McDonalds was aware of the danger (there were other similar cases), but did nothing.

I've also heard they deliberately kept the coffee very hot because they were promoting free refills, but wanted to discourage them to actually happen, but I don't know if it's true.

It is,

I thought that the line of thinking was that it was that hot because they didn't expect people to drink it immediately. No one is getting free refills from a drive through.

"Remember the case where someone got millions for spilling hot coffee on himself? Hot coffee is hot and it's the drinkers responsibility to not spill it. We can't blindly follow what we read or see. If we do that, there won't be any issue."

I think you pwned yourself here, repeating blindly a very distorted presentation of the actual incident. Go read up more on it, you might change your mind. There is a good reason why McD lost the case despite lawyering up.

Oh, you used the R word. That's a big no no. Nobody likes Responsibility, and you're to blame heh.

I don't mind taking personal responsibility and (anyone) getting handouts, things are a bit incorrectly tuned as far as laws go though.

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